Regardless of changes to the city’s Build the Block program and how Neighborhood Coordination Officers (NCOs) respond to crimes in the community, quarterly meetings continue to serve as an avenue to try to keep residents safe and informed – especially during the active summer months.
On Thursday, July 28th, the 69th Precinct’s Sector B hosted its virtual session. NCO Gunvinder Singh, from neighboring Sector A, took over for NCO Yhayh Saleh and joined NCO Viviana Segovia to tackle quality of life issues that have been plaguing the southeast portion of the command. Sector B includes the east side of East 94th Street to East 108th Street and the south side of Flatlands Avenue down to Canarsie Pier.
“The program is shifting, officers are switching tours, we’re very understaffed and covering different patrols to make more arrests, but we’re still trying to keep quality of life issues in mind when residents file complaints,” said Officer Segovia.
Some of the chronic complaints in the sector include various conditions along Seaview Avenue, east of East 102nd Street. Many complained about a trailer being parked/abandoned there and others want the brush and weeds overgrowing on the medians to be tended to.
Segovia noted that a “heavy tow” has to be requested by the precinct in order to remove the trailer, since most of the typical tow operations for smaller vehicles have been coordinated with the State Sheriff’s Office. The officer added that on August 5th, a tow operation is scheduled for cars with fake plates.
“We will run those paper plates of cars that are parked in one spot for a long time – or maybe it’s a car that looks suspicious – and we’ll see if it needs to be towed,” Segovia said. “But trailers are huge and they need special tow units that can put them in a lot where there’s enough space for it.”
With over 70 callers on the Zoom session, residents brought a slew of issues to the table, including constant speeding, abandoned cars and the growing number of smoke shops in Canarsie, which is becoming a citywide trend as well.
House parties remain a hot topic and continue to be an irksome issue. Even though some house party hosts have been issued summonses for noise violations, among other offenses, officers contend that few cops in the precinct are trained to use sound meters that are subsequently used to write a summons.
The officers provided their contact information during the meeting.
There are four sectors within the 69th Precinct. To find out when your sector is having its next meeting, visit their Twitter page: @NYPD69Pct.